LONDON (III)

The second day in London we woke up early and we went down to the dining room with the yellow ticket for the typical English breakfast. I had seen that meal in photos, but it was nothing compared to what I found there. It’s thousand times better when you see it, when you smell it and you sample it. Bacon, sausages, fried eggs, scrambled eggs, boiled eggs, toasts, baked beans (there were cereals and other things but I can’t remember now), orange juice, apple juice, peach juice, water, tea, coffee, milk, and many other kinds of food. There was also some butter, jam and bread on the table. I filled my dish and a glass of apple juice and I went to the table we had chosen to enjoy the treasure. It was delicious (apart from the sausages). When I’m at home, I tend to eat a bowl of cereals with milk, but now, if I had time to prepare it, I would eat an English breakfast every day. At first, after the trip, it was difficult to wake up and know that a poor breakfast was waiting for me. Then, after the high dose of calories, we went to the room to get ready for the hike.

We got a travel card for three days. It allowed us to use the public transport (bus and underground) through the centre of the city. That day we started getting used to the use of the many bus lines and we left the underground (also called tube or subway) for the following day. Most of the bus and tube lines appeared in my map, which means that there haven’t been many changes in fifteen years. About the buses, we had to pay attention to the number of each bus placed in the front side of the vehicle. When you enter into the big red bus, you have to show your travel card to the bus driver, although they don’t pay much attention and it would be easy to trick them, and then you can sit at the first floor or at the second one (it isn’t allowed to stay at the stairs, surely it is a safety measure). All of them are quite comfortable, but I missed to get on one the classical Big Red Bus.


First of all we went to the Big Ben, near the River Thames. I had to ask to some English pedestrians how they pronounce the word Thems, because I used to say [teims] but then I discovered that the real pronunciation is [temz]. It’s useful to know it because sometimes you don’t understand why somebody pulls a face when you ask how to go to somewhere. From the bridge near the Big Ben we had a great view; we could see the London Eye and the Millennium Bridge among other buildings, maybe it wasn’t sunny like the first day but it wasn’t raining and that was good enough. One of the most shocking things for me was that, in a park near the Houses of Parliament there were some tents surrounded with banners condemning war or demanding peace. I think I hadn’t ever seen in person such way of using the right to freedom of speech.

The following stage was the Buckingham Palace, we wanted to watch the famous change of the guard at half past eleven, but it only happens every second day and we had bad luck. After the palace we walked through many streets and parks. I didn’t pay attention to the churches because all of them look the same to me, but I was open-mouthed with the parks, there are some enormous parks in London, with rivers, very old trees, swans, ducks, squirrels... For an instant, you forget that you are in one of the largest cities of the world and not in the country.



Another park we visited after the Buckingham Palace was the Hyde Park. It’s very famous because it’s the meeting point of many persons, a good place to walk, to practise sports and many other activities the most famous, maybe, of which takes place every Sunday. I mean the Speakers’ Corner, where you can go to show your ideas, your convictions, freely. That day there were three conversations when we arrived: the first one was a bold man who was talking about people’s behaviour, men and women, sex, etc. He finished speaking German because there was a group of German students and I left the conversation. There was also a woman that was talking about religion, she was standing on a chair and holding a Bible. But the best discussion in my opinion was between two men: The first one, a Londoner on a small ladder, was trying to prove the existence of God in front of a man from Kentucky, who was standing on a box of detergent. That conversation was very hot, their arguments were very serious and it was so interesting. Next to the speakers there was a couple with a poster that said free hugs and I went to buy one. That’s a very famous movement that has spread around the world, especially in the most important cities.

We went to Harrods, a department store well-known throughout the world. We didn’t visit it because it was our free time and we had to have lunch, but we got into one moment to go to the toilets. After going through many sections (perfumes, handbags, sunglasses...) and escalators, we arrived to the toilets. While I was waiting for an empty toilet, I saw a very comical situation: there was an employee who provided toilet paper and perfume and turned on the taps to the customers, who thanked and, sometimes, tipped him. He made the same when I went there, but I didn’t want perfume and I didn’t tip him because I hadn’t asked for that. I think that’s quite unpleasant because I can do it myself and the bin was full of napkins, which is more contaminant and less practical than an air hand-dryer.

The two sandwiches from a restaurant near Harrods were nothing to shout about, you can’t expect to eat something good, cheap (and quite healthy) very near Harrods. Then, we decided to visit the department store, but we were eight people and the doorman only let four persons enter because of their rules (no groups). He also told us that if we wanted to get in we had to go to another door, but the real truth is that he warned the other doormen not to let us enter. I have to admit that I am grateful for this fact because we decided to visit the Natural History Museum; otherwise I wouldn’t have gone there.

The Nature History Museum contains many fossilized specimens of dinosaurs and animals, some of which are extinct. The collection is great and they are very well maintained. My favourite one was the Smilodon Fatalis, commonly known as Sabre-toothed tiger.



That week took place the London Fashion Week, and the exposition was near the museum. Because of that, we saw many people wearing bold clothes (very bold, that place looked like carnival and it was difficult to hold back the laugh).

Later, we went to Piccadilly Circus, where we had planned to meet, by bus. In fact, that place is like a circus: from the round square with a big fountain we could observe the front side of a very high building covered by many neon signs that were always flickering and cars that moved continuously around the square and the web of streets. There was some time left and we discovered a place to buy a box of varied doughnuts (with many kinds of chocolate, jam, cream, sugar, with shavings, filled, covered, with layers...).

That was the last we did after coming back to the hotel. That time there wasn’t a game show in the TV but something better: Top Gear. It’s a very popular English program about cars produced by the BBC. I had heard many times about it but I had never been able to watch it. In that chapter, the presenters of the program competed for travelling through Japan as fast as possible. One of them drove a Nissan GT-R, the others used the public transport (we must take into account that in Japan some trains can reach more than 400 km/h). The result: a crazily funny program.



Finally, after eating, we decided what to do at night: most of people stayed at the hotel, but some of us decided to go out. We took the underground to Covent Garden, and we realized that everything was closed. Nightlife in London is very different than in Spain, most of pubs close at eleven (in fact, they close a bit later) and clubs are only for adults. Then, if you are under age you must be with an adult if you want to go to a pub and you must forget clubs because the minimum age is eighteen. We knew it before, but we had to try it. We found a place with clubs and pubs near the Chinese District and some of us could go into the clubs; the others tried to go into a club called Chiquito but it was closing and we went to a bar. It doesn’t mean we had a bad time because I had expected that before and the city, the big red buses and Trafalgar Square are wonderful at night. It’s a shame I didn’t have a better camera and more time.